Unanticipated blessings during adoption process

When our family decided to pursue adoption, there was really only one outcome we imagined. A child. Seems obvious. You start the adoption process to adopt a child. That’s the sought after, prayed for outcome.

But any adoptive family will tell you there are countless unanticipated blessings that appear throughout the process, and even after an adoption is completed, the process never ends. You simply transition from a family hoping to adopt to an adoptive family.

So here we are, five years after entering the foster care to adopt program and a year and a half after our youngest son blessed our family, and still the blessings continue.

My wife and daughter are going to China.

Really. China.

To think it all started in Wisconsin when we became foster parents with the intention to adopt.

Much of the adoption process is waiting. Request paperwork and wait. Complete the paperwork and wait. You find yourself adding “walk to mailbox with completed paperwork” to your to-do list just to create the illusion of action. Hey! I mailed that envelope, so cross another item off the list! What’s up next?

Wait.

For us the waiting lasted three years. One way we filled the time was reading books about adoption. One of those books, Choosing to See by Mary Beth Chapman, introduced us to Show Hope, an organization whose mission is “to care for orphans, restoring the hope of a family to orphans in distress around the world.”

Show Hope fulfills their mission by providing Adoption Aid financial grants to adoptive families and operating Special Care Centers which provide medical support and care to orphans in China.

See where this is going?

We started supporting Show Hope to combat the waiting. To do something, anything, rather than just wait. If our adoption wasn’t moving forward, we thought, might as well help someone else’s progress. We loved reading the stories of families traveling around the world (53 countries) to bring their sons and daughters home (more than 4,500 children).

We followed the work Show Hope did at their Special Care Centers, especially at Maria’s Big House of Hope, their flagship care center in Luoyang, China, 800 kilometers southwest of Beijing. Children at Maria’s experience a family atmosphere and receive comprehensive medical care, including doctor supervision and surgeries when necessary.

Our family’s way to do something while waiting for our adoption to finalize has transformed into an ongoing relationship with Show Hope through their sponsorship program.

And guess what appeared in our email in box, wedged between an offer for free shipping and directions for resetting a password? An invitation from Show Hope for sponsors to travel to Maria’s Big House of Hope.

So this summer Jennifer and Megan are going to China. They’ll get to meet the children at Maria’s Big House of Hope. Hold them, play with them, care for them, and show them that there are people, some from halfway around the world, who love them.

Now all they need to do is complete the paperwork.

And wait for summer.

(To learn more about Show Hope and Maria’s Big House of Hope, visit ShowHope.org.)

Brian Wilhorn lives in Vesper with his wife, kids and not enough quarters.